Montreal has given us more than just William Shatner. The Canadian city has also dished up a great tapestry of music over the decades, from iconic figures like Leonard Cohen and Celine Dion, to cutesy pop two-hit wonders like Corey Hart, dramatic and engaging artists like Rufus Wainwright and even bands that can satisfy the most irritable and stereotypically snarky music critics, e.g. Arcade Fire.
Montreal has also given the world a funky little electro-funk duo that goes by the name of Chromeo, which performs Monday, Oct. 3 at Turner Hall Ballroom.
Chromeo is a band that has made a name for itself by giving music fans libido-charged dance tracks reminiscent of the funk and pop music from the '80s.
Building upon the legacy set up by Roger Troutman and Zapp, Parliament and Funkadelic and Hall and Oates, singer/guitarist Dave 1 and keyboard/talk box/synth player P-Thugg join bands like Jamiroquai in keeping music as funky as it can be when they do it.
When digging deeper into the motivations of the duo, one finds that everything they do is a tribute to some aspect of the music that inspires what it does, down to the girls in its music videos and their backup singers, Patrick "P-Thugg" Gemayel said.
"Actually the girls that sing backup for us on some of the live shows we do are absolutely inspired by the (Robert} Palmer girls in his videos. I mean, it's not just Palmer. It's a general overall aesthetic of the late '70s, early '80s beautiful women, reminding you of Playboy or Pirelli calendars from the '70s."
Gemayel has also been known to shed the standard for what is considered sexy in today's age and has minted the image of his overweight and hairy body through their music video for "Hot Mess" – and he's okay with that.
"I don't care, I just do it. I like the idea, you know? The idea was great. The concept of the video was great. You know, I'm not about to ruin it for some you know, self-conscious. I'm not going to wear a t-shirt in a sauna, I've got to be naked, so there I am."
But with all of the fun that they have on stage and in their music videos, Gemayel says that it's all business when he and Dave are in the studio.
"Our sessions are everything but loose," he said. "I mean we have fun for sure, but it's very, very focused. When we get in, we don't sit around. We don't sit in couches and make talk, we're in front of the computer writing, putting some stuff down, recording some guitars, working on guitars. The most we'll chill is half an hour to write some missing parts of a vocal or something, but in the studio we're like work, then we're done."
Jack White of The White Stripes and The Raconteurs isn't the only person who finds the digital age of recorded music to be lacking in warmth. Gemayel also takes issue with it.
"Music has been too concentrated on modern technology, crazy drum loops, and crazy sounds," he said. "Everything's digital. Everything sounds cold. We just like how the early '80s were, how the songwriting was. You'd have a bridge, you have a pre-chorus. The synthesizers and technology they used back then sounded much more warm and, you know, it sounded much more consistent than, in my opinion, the later technologies in the '90s where everything became digital.
"We're big fans of analog music. It's just the music we like the most, and it's just how the songs come, how we write songs and how we're inspired the most. There's a certain innocence in the '80s that's really great to capture and I think in the '90s and early 2000s everything is a bit more calculated because we've seen so much music in the '70s and '80s we're kind of like overdosed with songwriting. I guess that's what sticks with us."
Gemayel does admit that using Pro Tools purely for tracking is much easier than going reel to reel, but everything else is done the old way.
"It's so convenient to like store sessions and go back to a session, record, re-record," he explained. "It's very useful. But, everything outside of Pro Tools is all analog."
As ardent as some people can be when supporting music that takes a more "throwback" approach, Chromeo hasn't seen an overwhelming amount of green pastures, even when it began passing tunes around its hometown.
"We got resistance everywhere," said Gemayel. "I mean we started off with studio demos. We didn't really tour and play in Montreal clubs and stuff. We did that when we were younger. It was definitely like a studio project that started, and when you're in control of your own stuff in the studio, nobody really has a word or a say in what you do, right? It was a side project for us, so whatever we were inspired to do and create, it's not like we were subject to club promoters who didn't want to book us, stuff like that.
"So, the beginning was just, you know, trying to find our sound and what we wanted to stand for. When we got that on the first album, I guess a couple of those songs caught people's attention, especially on the web, and that's basically how it started. We didn't really start off with Montreal, a local band or local heroes, we just started off on the Internet like most of the bands today."
However, with the aid of the Internet, the duo was able to catch some fire internationally and even toured with English band Bloc Party. One of the biggest nods to Chromeo's career so far came at the mostrecent Juno Awards, when fellow Canadian and big-time recording star Drake called it his favorite group.
With the Young Money star being such a fan of Chromeo, could a Dave 1/P-Thugg/Drake track ever happen?
"It might be possible," teased Gemayel. "We knew him from before. Canada is small so we've kind of bumped into each other a lot. But it was definitely flattering for him to say that in front of like 3 million people."
With several projects under their belts together, the recording process is now almost a cinch for the duo.
"There's always differences and sometimes we don't really understand right away. This is technically our fifth or sixth album recorded together," said Gemayel. "We recorded like two or three albums when we were in high school, when we were a bit younger, so we've gone through that process already.
"That's the beauty of working with somebody for such a long time. You just know how to deal with each other. You know how the other one thinks and you can get over those annoying fits of just trying to push an idea. You can just be honest. We work really fast because if one of us doesn't like something, we say it right away and we just move on to the next page. I guess that helps a lot to stay efficient, it helps to write more, and better, and faster."
So what will Chromeo bring to the stage at Turner Hall for its performance as headliner that it might not have had the opportunity to have when performing as an opener?
"We can afford background singers. We can afford more lights. It's all about money, you know? The more we make, the more we spend into the show and less into our pockets," said Gemayel.
"We definitely like to re-invest our money and get as much as we can for our live show. We're two guys, so I mean, I can do backflips and take my shirt off but at the end of the day there's 4,000 people in front of us, we want to make sure the show is solid visually, musically, aesthetically - you know, everything. We try to re-invent as much as we can."
Opening for Chromeo is another retro fanatic, Mayer Hawthorne, who Gemayel believes is a natural fit as a part of the tour.
"We kind of understand what he does. It's the same spirit, even if it's different music," he said. "He has his niche, the sound that he likes from the stuff that he listens to a lot and that's what influences him. We like that and I definitely get where he's coming from. He's trying to revive that whole soul Temptations, O'Jays, all that type of stuff. It's stuff we like too. So, we definitely see eye-to-eye musically, and I guess we recognized that and we started paying attention to the music. He's a great vocalist, also."
To give you an idea of what Chromeo brings to the table, here are two great videos that display its most dancey side.
Born in Milwaukee and raised in the Milwaukee suburb of Brown Deer, Concordia University Wisconsin alumnus Poppe has spent the majority of his life in or around the city and county of Milwaukee.
As an advocate of Milwaukee's hip-hop community Poppe began popular local music blog Milwaukee UP in March 2010. Check out the archived entries here.
Though heavy on the hip-hop, Poppe writes about other genres of music and occasionally about food, culture or sports, and is always ready to show his pride in Milwaukee and Wisconsin.
